Trail Review: Indian Truck Trail to Santiago Peak

Holy crap, this trail was tough. The 12 mile round trip hike is a strenuous full day hike that has both beautiful views and challenging grades. The scenery overlooking Corona is a gorgeous mountainous desert landscape, filled with rolling red hills and flat yellow planes, along with a chaparral forest twist. You also get swirling paths that seem like a beige paint against the vastly green mountain.

Directions from LA are fairly simple, you take the 91 East to the 15 South. On the 15 south, you take the Indian Truck Trail exit, turn left at the stoplight, turn right at the stop sign, turn in to some suburbs, and then you will arrive at the entrance

Here you can park your car, or you can drive up to any of the turnoffs along the path to park your car. The nice thing about this is that you can choose exactly how much of the trail you want to take on by foot. If you're a rugged hiker type, you can park your car at the entrance. If you're morbidly obese and want to get outdoors, you can drive to near the top and park your car there. Also, there is a Korean Christian meditation retreat center on the way up if that's your thing.

Now, I love doing hikes with friends, so I brought my friend Sam. He hadn't hiked in a while as well, so this was a challenge for the both of us. We actually found this place by mistake; initially we had intended to go on the Holy Jim Trail (which socalhiker.net has a very good article on), but Google Maps directed us to the truck trail by accident. Whoops.

The path is pretty mild for the first two miles, which makes for a very pleasant warm up for the rest of the hike. It is very very yellow, and for those who have a fear of such colors, should avoid this area

The middle of the path was agreed as the most enjoyable part. You ascend into chaparral forests, providing a nice canopy of trees for shade, and also has a dazzling array of shades of green. Those who have a fear of green should avoid this part

Before hitting the last portion of the trail, make sure to stop for a break where there are two white gates and a geological survey milestone. It is the first place where you can view both sides of the mountain. This spot may also serve a good end for hikers who want a mild hike, as it gets much more difficult beyond that point.

The last stretch of the trail, the Upper Holy Jim Trail, is the most physically demanding. I couldn't quite calculate how many feet of elevation you gain per mile, but my legs (and my soon torn ligament) were sore by the end of it.

The top is very rewarding. It gives you views of both Orange County and Corona, although not at the same time. There is a fence surrounding several communcation towers that prevent you from coming to the tippy top.

As the name states, if you decide not to get to the peak by foot, you can decide to get to the top using whatever vehicle you have. I saw SUVs, Imprezas, and dirt bikes wiz by as I was walking up. It is very well kept, and the road does not wash out during rains (not a concern considering that we're in a massive drought) and is wide and spacious. If you do decide to take your car be mindful of the hikers as it is their path as well as yours.

Just Off The Beaten Path Now On Instagram!

Hey guys I'm now on instagram. I don't have much at the moment, but I'll post pretty frequently starting today. My username is the website title, justoffthebeatenpath, and here's a link to the web viewer (for those of you who just want to look at the pretty pictures).

Up The Pacific Coast Highway to Neptunes Net (and How I Met Charlie Sheen)

One of my favorite and most frequently taken routes I take is from Santa Monica to Neptunes Net. It is a gorgeous ride, not too treacherous, and really allows you to take your time on the road and pay attention to the beautiful environment you're going through. In a previous post, I had found a pretty cool place on the road. Today was also a perfect day to go riding

While the rest of the country freezes over, we languish in our amazing weather

 I decided to take my second ride on motorcycle with my friend Ben. We had initially 

planned to go on the Angeles Crest Highway, but his little vespa was chickenshit compared to the rest of the vehicles on the road, and we called it off and decided to reroute.

My Friend Ben. As you can see, he has a Vespa

And so we decided to go up PCH to Neptune's Net. The weather was perfect, but road conditions were less than favorable. The traffic was rather terrible, and we got almost run in to at least 3 or 4 times by some idiots (car drivers please watch for us motorcyclists FYI) in Santa Monica. However, once we go on to the main road, everything was pretty nice. 

It was pretty empty north of Santa Monica

At Neptune's Net

And so we arrived at Neptune's Net after a couple of hours. Located 30 miles up the coast from Santa Monica, the whole place was filled with bikes and bikers, and a bunch of interesting characters just in time for lunch.

This is only a small portion of the bikes parked

I'm not usually a fan of Harley-Davidsons, but this one was beautiful

Oddly enough, the garden burgers were pretty tasty, so vegetarians can go and not feel bad eating meat. However, Neptune's Net is known for their seafood, which is admittedly amazing (before I turned vegetarian, I used to order the crab cake burgers and was never unsatisfied).

"Where's Charlie Sheen?" you're probably asking. Well, he decided to take a visit to Neptune's Net at the same time that we were. Unfortunately, I was too busy taking photos before the battery on my camera ran out before I could snap a photo, but Ben was able to take a picture. He commented on our jackets, calling us crazy for wearing such thick gear on a hot day.

Overall, definitely a good day, and a good ride. Check Neptune's Net out if you can. Where are some other good riding/driving locations you know of?

How To: Not Fail Your Gap Year

Failing a gap year? How is that possible? I'm totally free from grading and teachers and "The Man", what could I possibly fail on? The answer: yourself.

 I pretty much flung myself in to my gap year. No real planning involved, and so far I've just been taking it as it comes. This is not recommended for everyone, or even most people. There have been a ton of headaches as to what to do next, and some opportunities that I could have taken were seized before I could get to them. If you choose this path, you still definitely have a lot of opportunities.

 

Me after finding a proper internship. Source: Rantchick.com

However, if you want to make life easier, here are a few tips on having a successful gap year. You don't necessarily have to follow these to the point, and you can deliberately ignore these suggestions if they don't apply to what you want to do. Bearing this is in mind,

Tip 1: Think About What You Want to Do

Although this may seem obvious, you may not have a clue in the world as to what you want to do with your gap year. Perhaps you slacked off in high school and did nothing and thus have no immediate interests. Perhaps you have too many interests and cannot decide between the two (I'm assuming that your case is the latter). If you're having a hard time mentally sorting out what you want to do, there's a way of sorting through the muck.

Road trips are always a good idea. Source: freedigitalphotos.net artur84

Write down everything that you want to do in life right now. I mean all the big things that you want to do or pursue, like a painting project, or traveling to different places, or a skill that you want to aquire. You're basically writing a bucket list. Now, with that bucket list, think of all the things that you could probably accomplish this year at this age with this amount of money (or money you could receive), and cross off all the things that you probably couldn't do. For instance, if you put down "Get married", you probably would want to hold that off for a few years assuming you're around my age, and so you would cross that off.
After the process of elimination you've probably trimmed most of the fat off. A good list should be one that doesn't give you anxiety to look at. Now that you have a much more digestible list, look up tangible opportunities write them down

Tip 2: Don't Stick to One Idea

If you somehow found your lifelong passion of whatever it is, congratulations, you can skip this one. For the 99% who hasn't found out what makes them tick, try to experiment during your gap year. Do you have a slight notion that organic pomegranate farming would be interesting? Pursue it. Think about it, you have a whole year to make your own. You can do quite a bit if you put your mind to it, and you should think out of the box as well. Was fixing your car/motorcycle/bicycle an enjoyable experience rather than a backbreaking pain in the ass? Go offer to work in a repair shop.

This may be you happily working the pomegranate fields. Source: bigthink.com

This tip also applies to resources as well. Don't expect all of your intern opportunities to come from a single source like InternMatch.com. You may be able to find better and easier to obtain internships on volunteer websites. Non-profits are always looking for people to help out, and aren't as concerned with how bad you are at programming a website as most for-profit companies are. In fact, here is a list of websites I use to find stuff to do:

• www.internmatch.com/
• http://www.volunteermatch.org/
• http://www.craigslist.org/
• http://college.monster.com/

Don't just stop here. Find out opportunities in person in your area. It is refreshing to get off the computer for a while and be able to just walk and find jobs.

Tip 3: Create a Resume

If you haven't already, do it. It is by far the easiest way to convey your experience and skills to a potential employer or mentor. Although this may seem worthless to the high school graduate, it is crucial to some internships. There are a ton of free awesome free resume makers, and google is your friend here. Also, since you're going to want to tailor your resume to different opportunities, you're going to want to create a base resume with you're skills that can apply to most of what you're doing. Save the advice of resume creation to more experienced people (again, google can be your friend).

 Tip 4: Get Off Your Ass and Do It

Seriously. If you see an opportunity just go for it. Don't waste your time thinking about whether you will actually get the opportunity, just apply, or talk, or pursue. Often you will catch yourself just idly browsing job websites not applying anything, or looking up trips and not scheduling anything, or looking up organizations and not contacting them. Realize that you're doing it, and then stop it and get your stuff together. Realize that you are spending time looking for stuff to do, and is basically wasting time.
Along the same line is to use all of your resources. Friends, family, people that you talk to that seem interesting are all potential opportunities. Just be as open as possible. You're not being a prick by asking whether or not someone can help you out.

This guy could be the key to your next adventure. Source: http://www.smosh.com/

Finally, here's a good quote that I think about quite a bit to close the article:

"You miss %100 of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

What do you guys think about this advice? Did I leave anything out?

Backpacking Ideas in Southern California

    I personally love to do go out in to nature for a weekend and do more than just a day hike. The feeling of your backpack against you, the long roads, and the ever changing environments are simply precious. However, searching for nice places to do multi-day backpacking trips in Couthern California is quite difficult. The reddit forum (http://www.reddit.com/r/socalhiking) is okay, but does not provide a definitive list of places to go backpacking. So, here is the best place to look:

District 5 National Forests

http://www.fs.usda.gov/

We have 4 national forests in Southern California. The closest to LA is Angeles National Forest, a popular destination for motorcyclists to go through due to a beautiful highway that splits the forest in half. Northwest of that is Los Padres National Forest, located north of beautiful Ojai. San Bernadino National Forest is to the east, compassing part of the Pacific Crest Trail. In the south, near San Diego, is Cleveland National Forest. Check them all out, mix and match trails to your liking and you can control how long you want to stay in the forest. Pretty cool huh? Don't get turned off by the "Fee Areas" name, you only have to pay for parking (or not depending on which forest. Rangers have to prove that you parked with the intent of using the forest recreationally. Whether you want to take that risk or not is not in my hands).

So, do you guys have any favorite trails or trips?

5 Minutes a Day Could Change Your Life

Life is pretty hectic. You begrudgingly wake up out of your oh-so-comfy bed, hastily cook breakfast, run to work/school, get out tired, hang out with friends, and by 11:00 you decide to go to sleep. The next day the process repeats. In fact, it repeats for 5 consecutive days a week. Then on the weekend you decide to make yourself busy by watching TV or writing or reading. You're constantly bombarding yourself with stimuli to keep you entertained. You may sit and reflect on a long car ride home or the occasional sunset that you see with your friends, but otherwise you don't leave space for yourself to breath a bit. However, all it takes is 5 minutes to drastically change the course of your day.

Time Management

First think about when you have at least 5 minutes to do basically anything you want. I deliberately picked this duration so that you can't excuse yourself by saying, "I'm too busy", or "I don't have the time", or "I can't fit it in to my schedule". How about before you go to work/school? Your lunch break? After your daily grind? I'm sure if you think hard enough you can come up with an appropriate time to set aside. Now that you've picked the time, let's go through what I want you to do.

Technique Matters

First, find a comfy chair to sit in and sit in it correctly, like so:

http://www.ergocanada.com/

Basically what you're doing is sitting upright so that your back is straight (although there is a natural curve in your spine) and that you have your feet and butt firmly planted on the chair. If you don't usually sit like this it may feel weird the first time. But don't worry, it's only 5 minutes.

Now find something to devote your entire attention to. I literally mean entire, you cannot think about anything else for the 5 minutes while you sit down. Focus your entire attention on it, but do not pain yourself in to thinking about it. Basically what you're doing is clearing out your head of distractions. The object of focus has to be something consistent, like your heartbeat, your breathing, or an anxiety (although is not recommended). Just about anything that lingers and doesn't go away is fine. Now set a timer for five minutes, close your eyes, and just sit with the object that you chose. Don't judge it (if it is an anxiety), and just understand what the physical sensation feels like. Then, after the time is up, open your eyes.

What the hell is this?

This probably sounds pretty weird that I'm just recommending you to sit down and practically do nothing for five minutes. Given that a lot of us prefer to be productive, or to relax how we choose, this is perfectly reasonable. But our leisure time still isn't doing "nothing", you're still doing something. Have you ever gotten a song stuck in your head? Think of how annoying that is. Now think about that you have other things stuck in your head as frequently, friends, family, items you want to purchase, how much the world sucks, how awesome it is. You still have no breathing room to readjust yourself. This is what these 5 minutes do.

This also may sound like new-age hippy bullshit. It's not. People who aren't even said in the same breath as eastern loving people have exposed the value of the practice of meditation. So, just doing this for five minutes a day will make you more productive, happier, and sharper.

"Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity." - Voltaire

Will Zimbabwe's Constitutional Referendum Prevent Another Mugabe?

Last week in Zimbabwe was the much needed constitutional referendum, as political leaders have expressed a desire to limit presidential powers in the country. Spearheading the constitution is Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a key leader in the opposition of Robert Mugabe. The referendum addressed much needed issues, particularly pertaining to government powers. Now there is a clearly defined separation of judicial and presidential powers, as well as term limits, a clause granting the president only what has been included in the constitution, and prevention of the president from appointing whomever he choses to office. Proponents like Freedomhouse.org say that this is a crucial step towards democracy in Zimbabwe, while detractors say that low voter turnout deter the credibility of the bill. Only time will tell if the new constitution truly helps the fragile country turn itself around.